Past shows

Frank Fairfield

This show was on Dec 15th, 2013
| 23 people watched

Frank has a unique, shy cowboy-like style. An eighteen '90s appeal. It was a fun show and we enjoyed watching. Loved to hear Frank play all of his instruments especially his little period perfect parlor guitar!
A great little venue!

Bio

Frank Fairfield is a young man and old time folk musician who plays fiddle, guitar and banjo while singing and hollering. An unbelievable word of mouth sensation who channels the spirit of another era in his spellbinding live shows.

Born in Fresno, California, Frank sings tunes he has worked hard to collect from around the world as well as his own well-dusted ditties. His eclectic sets...
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Frank Fairfield is a young man and old time folk musician who plays fiddle, guitar and banjo while singing and hollering. An unbelievable word of mouth sensation who channels the spirit of another era in his spellbinding live shows.

Born in Fresno, California, Frank sings tunes he has worked hard to collect from around the world as well as his own well-dusted ditties. His eclectic sets feature soaring hillbilly ballads, arcane rambling songs and murder ballads delivered in a reedy tenor with that irresistible American Primitive quality. Still in his twenties but steeped in the pre-War Americana of Mississippi John Hurt and Dock Boggs, he cut his teeth as a street performer in Los Angeles and has the raw intensity and quick-fingered technique to make your hairs stand on end. Alternating between banjo, fiddle and guitar, he performs a different set of traditional songs and originals each night, drawing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the American folk canon.

He has released two albums on Tompkins Square (home of Polk Miller and Charlie Louvin), a collection of traditionals on 2009′s eponymous album, followed by Out On The Open West (2010), featuring his own originals and a cast of guest musicians. An ardent 78 rpm collector, he has also compiled two selections of rare and unheralded gramophone recordings from around the world. One entitled "Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts", the other, "Turn Me Loose", on his own Pawn imprint.

“A young Californian who sings and plays as someone who’s crawled out of the Virginia mountains carrying familiar songs that in his hands sound forgotten: broken lines, a dissonant drone, the fiddle or the banjo all percussion, every rising moment louder than the one before it.”
– Greil Marcus
“One of America’s best conduits of antiquity” – Pitchfork